


Look At Our Gay Dragons

by secretsofluftnarp (luftie)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Coming Out, Dragons, Gen, cecil and old woman josie are friends, cecil is a cool gay uncle, night vale girl scouts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 01:30:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2005866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luftie/pseuds/secretsofluftnarp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Old Woman Josie helps Cecil cope with Carlos' absence. Janice and Cecil bond on the way home from Girl Scout Camp, and discover a winged friend.</p><p>Takes place after Old Oak Doors part B.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look At Our Gay Dragons

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this post: http://spottedpigmyemo.tumblr.com/post/91328119001/gay-night-vale-dragons-so-i-gave-each-of-the

“You have salt, right?” Cecil said, balancing a mixing bowl of batter on his hip.  
  
“Oh yes, dear. The angels brought it back once they were finished with it,” Old Woman Josie said.  
  
Cecil had decided not to contradict Old Woman Josie on the topic of angels that afternoon. Old Woman Josie had invited him over to bake, and he figured and the topic of angelic presence would inevitably come up. A tall, winged being had floated through earlier, suggesting that Cecil consider walnuts instead of coriander in the second batch of chocolate-chip muffins, but said being had floated away as nonchalantly as they had arrived, settling instead on Old Woman Josie’s couch and flipping on the shopping channel.

Cecil tossed a dash of salt into the batter, and it coughed back, emitting a few orange sparks. Cecil was grateful that Old Woman Josie had lent him an apron (it read “KISS THE COOK, OR ELSE”), and while it only came to the top of his thigh, it was better than nothing.  
  
“Does that mean I’ve got the balance right?” Cecil asked. “I don’t usually make these from scratch.”  
  
“It’s a good sign,” Old Woman Josie said. “But it might mean you need to add more butter. Or chocolate. One of those.”  
  
“These are already really rich –“  
  
“Cecil, you’ve caught me. I am trying to fatten you up,” Old Woman Josie said, waving a theatrical finger. “Then I’m going to pop you in the oven, along with a local school child or two, and have a nice roast.”  
  
“I hadn’t pegged you for the type,” Cecil said. “And the local schoolchildren put up an admirable fight these days.”  
  
“When was the last time you had a good meal, Cecil?” Old Woman Josie asked. “And sympathy fruit baskets don’t count.”  
  
“I admit I don’t understand the sympathy fruit baskets,” Cecil said. “Carlos is – away. Not -- gone. But to be honest I – I guess I can’t remember. There was that whole ‘Battle for Night Vale’ thing, and the terrible things that happened before that, and before that I guess Carlos did most of the cooking? And now there’s something growing in the fridge, about a foot in diameter, and blue, and glowing...and I’m afraid to put food near it, but I’m also afraid to throw it away – what if it’s part of an important scientific breakthrough? Carlos hasn’t texted me back about that. It’s been about three hours. Do you think I should call him?”  
  
“Is there someone else who can help?” Old Woman Josie asked.  
  
“Well, normally there’s The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In My Home, but the other day she said she ‘can’t work under these conditions’ and disconnected my wifi. I think she...left.”  
  
“That bad, is it?”  
  
“I admit I’ve gotten behind on the housekeeping,” Cecil said. “But there are only a few laundry slugs. Like...maybe ten. Or twenty. Definitely less than a hundred or two.”  
  
Old Woman Josie gave Cecil a serious look. “When you go home, I’m sending an Erika with you. They’re very helpful around the house.  And if, for instance, you see a pile of your missing boyfriend’s socks, and you can’t quite bring yourself to move them because a specific sort of sadness has rendered you temporarily immobile, well, having an Erika around can help with that too.”  
  
“Thank you, Josefina,” Cecil said, thinking that there was likely a great number of people who Old Woman Josie missed. “I’ve been trying to spend more time out of the house, but for instance – Carlos’ team of scientists had been planning to re-start the Star Trek Trivia Night they had going at the Thirsty Cactus Neighborhood Pub, but it didn’t really work without Carlos. And Dana’s been really busy on account of being newly elected mayor, and trying not to let the Night Vale Business Association declare any blood sacrifices on her behalf – which I respect as a matter of principle, but any long-held tradition is a really tough thing to change.”  
  
“I need to make sure our new mayor knows about the future home of the Old Night Vale Opera House,” Old Woman Josie mused. “It’s going to house the stuff of deep brain-boiled nightmare. You know, real romantic-like.”  
  
As Cecil and Old Woman popped the muffins in the oven, Cecil’s phone rang.  
  
“Oh, good,” Cecil said. “Maybe Carlos can tell me what to do about the pink ooze in the medicine cabinet too – oh.” Cecil held his phone at arm’s length, squinted at it, and grimaced. “It’s STEVE CARLSBERG.”  
  
“Oh don’t _shout_ ,” Old Woman Josie said, waving away an imaginary fly. “He’s not the brightest bulb in the box, but he’s not a menace.”  
  
Cecil answered the phone. “What do you want, Steve? No, I’m not surprised at all that you’re having car trouble, I’ve seen the kind of shape it’s in. Why yes, I did know this was Janice’s last week of sleepaway camp, she’s been sending me postcards...oh. I see. Steve, why don’t you stay where you are and make sure that rustbucket of yours is actually still running, and I’ll pick up Janice. No, it’s no trouble at all – well, that’s a lie. It’s disheartening the extent with which you still need to get your act together, but it’ll be nice to see Janice.”  
  
“Josie,” Cecil said, once he had hung up the phone, “are Erikas also helpful with, say, getting a few weeks’ worth of empty pizza boxes out of one’s car?”  
  
  
“Bye Alicia! Bye Khadija!” Janice shouted as the cluster of her fellow campers separated off into the parking lot. Janice and her wheelchair were covered in a thin layer of dust and dried mud, but this didn’t seem to faze her. Cecil went down his mental checklist – same number of eyes, same number of limbs – as he’d started to do whenever she was away for an extended period. She and the chair were also covered in pony beads, friendship bracelets, medals, and weavings with hyper-realistic depictions of snakes.  
  
“We decided it was an educational project,” Janice said, indicating the weavings of snakes. “The ones woven into the right wheel are poisonous, the ones on the left aren’t. That way if you’re out on a hike, just look over to check. Oh, and I have to tell Carlos that his idea about fitting dirtbike tires on the chair worked out awesome. Put me in the passenger seat? The chair folds up.”  
  
Cecil obliged, tossed Janice’s luggage in the back seat, and began a leisurely drive down Route 800 with the windows cracked slightly open.  
  
“Those are a lot of medals,” Cecil said, looking at the bits of medal and ribbon Janice wore around her neck.  
  
“I was co-captain of the Canoe Regatta, and we kicked butt,” Janice explained. “Course there’s no lakes or anything out in the Scrublands, but that just means you have to try harder. That’s how you get guns like these,” Janice said, flexing her arms. “I also medaled in archery, the bow-and-arrow kind. Tamika said I’d make a good sniper for the next call-to-arms, but I’m not totally sure if I’m into that.”  
  
“How is Tamika?” Cecil asked.  
  
“Tamika was annoyed because the camp counselors still wanted her to go through the counselor-in-training camp, while _she_ said she already had proven leadership skills. She spent most of the week building a tree fort – which is pretty cool, since there aren’t any trees – and constructing a defense catapult based on the works of Arundhati Roy.”  
  
Cecil nodded. He enjoyed this drive, the flat expanse of the desert before them, the mild breeze.  
  
“I made out with Sarah Al-Mujaheed,” Janice announced suddenly.  
  
Cecil slowed the car to a crawl. His heartbeat sped up. Part of what he felt was something like pride, and part of what he felt was something like fear, but neither of those things exactly. “Is she nice?” Cecil said. “She seems nice.”  
  
“She’s very nice,” Janice said, with a smile that Cecil suspected may have been smug.  
  
Cecil let the car crawl a little faster.  
  
“Don’t tell Steve,” Janice said.  
  
The muscles in Cecil’s face pulled together, like they were trying to hold a thought inside his head. “Are you afraid to tell Steve?”  
  
Janice thought for a moment. “I guess not. Not afraid, anyway. I think he’d be upset, because he definitely thinks I’m still a baby, and that would be super awkward.”

Cecil nodded. He felt a thought thicken around his heart, that he wished he could peel off and hand to Janice directly, without needing to translate it into mere words.  
  
“Janice, when I was your age – well, not exactly your age, a few years older, but still well within the realm of being able to say ‘when I was your age’ – I didn’t have any adults that I could talk to about...relationships. I’m glad that – I mean I’d be very happy if – I want you to have that.”  
  
“Steve means well,” Cecil found himself saying, and meaning it. “But he might say a lot of the wrong things. Actually, yes, in my experience he says nearly _all_ of the wrong things. But if...if you want me to help you talk to your mom first, we could definitely do that.”  
  
“Not yet, but thanks,” Janice said. “I mean, we’re not even dating. I mean, we talked about it, sort of? There’s a lot of ‘sort of.’”  
  
Cecil smiled widely, his heart much warmer and relaxed now. Something small, purple and winged flew through the cracked-open passenger-side window, and bounced off the side of his head.

Cecil blinked several times in rapid succession and pulled the car over. The something purple was hand-sized, and flapping about inside the car. “What is it? Is it a bat?”  
  
Janice took a plastic pistol from her hip and shot the winged entity. It dropped to the floor of the car.  
  
“That’s how we catch bats,” Janice explained. “It’s just water, it stuns them, then we check for disease.”  
  
“Why?” Cecil asked. “We’ve eradicated rabies. It was one of our least-popular diseases.”  
  
“ _Yes_ ,” said Janice, rolling her eyes a bit. “But they still carry _bat flu_.” She leaned into the back seat of the car, where the creature had landed. “Oh, wow. That’s not a bat, though.”  
  
Janice picked up the creature, and held it in the palm of her hand. It was a tiny lavender-colored dragon, with batlike wings and a somewhat perplexed expression. It shook its head, like a dog shaking off water, and chirped at Janice, like a mildly annoyed cat.

“Hey there, little guy,” Cecil said, reaching for a tiny hand-like claw with his index finger. “Where’d you come from?”  
  
The dragon opened his mouth in what would normally be a fire-breathing gesture, but only a watery rasp escaped.  
  
“How do you know they’re a he?” Janice asked.  
  
“Well, the spine ridges, the upward flare of the nostrils, the devilish little goatee,” Cecil said. He was quite familiar with the secondary sexual characteristics of most known dragon species, for reasons he didn’t always feel comfortable explaining.

“No, I mean, did you ask them?” Janice said. She brought the dragon close to her face. “Do you prefer male pronouns?”  
  
The dragon responded with a head waggle that could be reasonably interpreted as “sure.”  
  
“Do you want a hamburger, Janice?” Cecil asked. “Because I could go for a hamburger. Maybe this little guy could too.”

  
The Fast Food Hut and Picnic Area a little ways down the road had what Cecil found to be a very subdued patch of greenery, and a single outdoor picnic table where one could have a good artery-clogging meal in peace. Janice fed the dragon bits of her bacon cheeseburger, and it seemed both confused and delighted by the existence of pickles.  
  
“He’s so like you,” Janice said. “He has no idea what that thing is, but he thinks it’s the coolest anyway.”  
  
While Cecil was trying to think of a way to respond, the dragon hopped across the table and started sniffing and poking at Cecil’s phone.  
  
“Ooh, I’m getting a Skype call,” Cecil said. “You want in on it, little guy?”  
  
“He’s Dragon-Cecil,” Janice decided. “Cecil and Dragon-Cecil.”  
  
“Cecil!” said a familiar, delighted voice through the phone. “You’re outside! I’m outside too! That’s awfully exciting.” Carlos’ face, squinted from sunlight or smiling or both, took up nearly the whole screen. “And who’s that with you?”  
  
“Janice?” Cecil said.  
  
“Hi Carlos!” Janice said, too loudly. “Your dirtbike idea was awesome!”  
  
“That’s great to hear. Cecil, you’ll never guess who I found.” Carlos raised something in his palm up toward the phone-camera. It was another bat-sized dragon, but this one a fire-engine red, and with a flared skull like a triceratops. “He’s been helping me with my lab notes. He’s really good at multivariable equations!”  
The purple Cecil-esque dragon had brought his nose close to the phone screen, very interested in what lay beyond it. He cocked his head to the side, and waggled his eyebrows in the other dragon’s direction, first one brow, then the other.  
  
Carlos’ red dragon tossed his head and seemed to be preening. He appeared to lock eyes with Cecil’s dragon, and beckoned him forward with a single talon.  
  
“Oh no, they’re not going to fight, are they?” Carlos said.  
  
“No, they’re definitely flirting,” Cecil said. “That is definitely what dragon flirting looks like.”  
  
Cecil thought he heard Carlos squeal, genuinely squeal, and he found being sad was temporarily completely impossible. Cecil hugged Janice, who was surprised, but understanding.  
  
“Look, Cecil,” Carlos said, as the tiny lizards tapped their noses to the screen. “They’re kissing _. Look at our gay dragons_.”


End file.
